Iceland Family Holiday
So we have had a somewhat tricky past few years with job challenges, family members deaths and near misses of our own and we wanted to have a holiday that made us feel alive. Where do you go with three children 13, 11 and 11 who aren’t the sitting around relaxing type oh and parents who aren’t either! Throw into that the budget — not huge and a restriction to the school holidays. Well we usually take a caravan away and enjoy giving the children the kind of freedom that is cited as a memory for those over a certain age: the opening of the door with the knowledge they’ll come back when they’re hungry. But no this year we wanted/needed/deserved a treat: something special, something for everyone and memorable (for the right reasons). Yup Iceland — plenty to see, not too hot (quite cold in fact), manageably short flights. Well I guess it is a marmite country because the reactions we got when we told people we were going ranged from ‘Oh that’s different, not for me though’ or ‘Wow you know that’s somewhere I’ve always wanted to go’ or ‘Ooh it’s really expensive over there’ and ‘My Mum went to Reykjavik and loved it’.
We printed off an A4 map and were really pleased to find out that there was a road that travels all the way around the country (Route 1) (it is the only route!!!) and by following that you have the possibility of seeing most of the recommended tourist sites. Perfect but where to stay…
Well you might have already guessed we’re not really hotel types so we started out looking at the possibility of hiring a campervan and travelling around: but as we were going in the summer and the F roads are open we wanted to explore them and in a campervan that really isn’t possible. (F roads — they’re the ones that only open when the weather is good — probably about 5 months of the year). But this could have been a really cheap option for the five of us….hmm time for a rethink as Dad really wanted the ‘off-road’ experience. Well we stumbled across Booking.com and Holidaylettings.com — they had cottages we could rent and use as bases. Perfect and many even had hotpots (not Betty from Corry sausage and beans hot pots but proper hot tubs!) After lots of deliberation we decided to book 3 cottages strategically placed around the country and explore from them. The last night would be in a b&b at the airport. Dad got his own way and we hired a 4x4 Jeep Grand Cherokee! (hehe it was hideous to drive and my ‘style’ in it really scared him so he did all of the driving!)
I ought to mention the midnight sun: a phenomenon not to be missed but how odd. Your body says sleep (it does a lot nowadays though) and your eyes say party time. Ah and for the children I would definitely recommend sleep masks — I made the mistake of trying to buy them online and now have some seriously 50 Shades recommended purchases; pound shop a safer bet! (And the kids look so cute sleeping with them on, bless!)
So the first cottage we booked was a lush little cottage just 10 minutes from the airport, with a hotpot in the garden. What a jem. We were able to use this base to explore Reykjavik, Geysir, Gulfoss and the Reykanes Peninsular including the transcontinental bridge; we did get a trip to the Blue Lagoon in too. Classic who knew that rejuvenating mud could be applied all over with showers in between applications (11 year old boy), needless to say they put someone on duty doling out the mud and we weren’t invited to return! The kids were all delighted that they could now legitimately casually swear: slush puppy is called Krap — hmmm guess what their favourite drink became? Then after three sleeps we had to move on — I don’t mind cooking on holiday but I do object to cleaning so we paid for cleaning and linen at each property.
Top tip take packed lunches/snacks as you can drive long distances between cafes. They are not at all of the tourist sites. Also a loo roll in the boot advisable as there aren’t many loos on long journeys. Fill up when you can!
Well the journey North was long (longer than we thought it would be what with the hideous 4x4 and the speed limit of 56mph) but the cottage was exquisite. The owner had described it as luxury and it really was — based up on a hill overlooking Akeyuri with waterfalls coming down behind and snow on the ground. So from here we visited Akeyuri and Myvtan. Well Akeuri was hilarious as a cruise ship was in the harbour so the town was heaving with overdressed, over wealthy and over cameraed American tourists. The kids, by now were missing wifi and would have sold me and their father for a quick go so we sidled up to the moored ‘Costa Fortuna’ (ha ha who would have ever come up with that name?) and tried to log onto their wifi — huh tight lot have passwords! Akeyuri is a lovely town and there were shops to explore but were pretty tired from the journey so really made a poor stab at it. Myvtan is an amazing lake with fantastic lava field area to explore (Dummi…) We climbed up the side of volcano which had a crater of 1km then we went in the natural baths! Hmmmm they sell themselves as the Blue Lagoon of the North and they are, to be fair, lovely except for the smell! (Oh and something to bear in mind in Iceland they don’t appear to chemicalise their pools much so they expect you to shower naked (they are very strong about this) before you enter the pool) (In places there were changing room assistants checking on the nakedness!!! — great if you are travelling with prudish 11 and 13 year old girls who clearly have bodies that are so different from anyone elses they cannot be seen in public). Well after pretending to have enjoyed it for an hour ‘Oh it’s so good for you, you can feel the magic of the water’ we had a quick Krap and left.
Ah yes for the health and safety conscious — hmmmm Iceland seems to employ a ‘if you are stupid enough to step off the edge of the cliff, waterfall, into the boiling mud you deserve what is coming to you policy’. They might put up a small string in places of real danger just to help you out.
So after Akeyuri we trekked down to Hofn to explore the South. To get there we travelled on route 1 and were surprised to find that parts of this road are only passable if you have a 4x4, it is gravel and to be honest a bit scary in places. By this stage we realised that we needed to break up the final leg of our journey so we had shortened our stay in Hofn to two nights and booked into a mountain cabin for one night — near Vik. All of the towns have swimming pools so we swum in the town pool at Hofn — which was wonderful and we caused a great deal of entertainment by challenging ourselves to lurch between the icebath and superhot hotpot! (The locals are probably still talking about the crazy English family). We drove out to a meeting point to be taken up onto the glacier — this road was properly scary and as I was up in the front performed the grip scene out of Planes, Trains and Automobiles — yup the dashboard probably still has an imprint of my nails. Now we were not so lucky with the weather — it was cloudy but we’d survived the journey so we were jolly well going to take ski-doos out! The instructions were given, briefly, and off we went. Our guide would stop every so often to check we were still there and not fallen into one of the crevices — he even went back (taking one of my children for the ride) to look for people. Even though we couldn’t see much it was a great experience and we all loved it.
Now have I told you yet that all of the natural exploration you do is free? Yes that’s right — Geysir, the waterfalls everything except for swimming pools and excursions. Even the parking is free too — so you can see and do loads; we must admit that we spent too much time saying ‘Well in England that would have cost £80 for us!’ (we also smiled at all of the speed cameras, Griswold style!)
We left Hofn and drove towards Vik with plans to go out on a boat at the Glacier Lagoon — all I can say is it was a magical place. It is this lagoon where chunks of glacier fall into and then turn into icebergs and make their way out to sea. The family and I spent ages there. The kids spent hours pelting icebergs with stones and Dad even joined in kicking one in to retrieve a stone for me that had been stuck in a glacier for probably 1000 years. (I keep it in my coat pocket and no we weren’t the only ones doing destroying — it was an international male/young person bonding ritual.) So from there we journeyed in land to our cabin — Helga had agreed to lend us bedding as part of the price but this was not a normal service. Ok so the cabin was small and basic but it was in the most beautiful location. The dining area of the campsite was a cave, yes a cave all lit with tea light candles. There was a waterfall on site and it was worth the 20km gravel road journey to get there. Clearly we are spoilt Brits because by now there was a pattern emerging — we’d spend a journey making comments such as ‘Oh thank heavens we have a 4x4 we’d have never got here otherwise’ and ‘how do people manage without a 4x4?’ to arrive at our destination to be met by the sight of what became a ubiquitous Toyota Auris and a Campervan. We didn’t stay long in our cabin as the 11 girl had developed an inextinguishable desire to see Puffins, Dad also announced he’d always wanted to too so we set off having discovered there was a nest site nearby. We weren’t holding our breath but to our pure delight there were loads to see in fact to quote Dad ‘There’s bloody hundreds of the things’. One happy daughter.
So now to complete our holiday Dad wanted to do some serious off roading and fording. Many of the rivers we had passed were commented ‘I could have forded that’ with accompanying support from the boy child! Well on the way to edge of the Eyjafaller…. Glacier (our chosen off road experience!) we visited the coolest waterfall — it had a cave behind so you could actually walk behind it. Now that made us all happy (but not happy enough to forget the off road/ford bonanza!).
Well we travelled in land over rocks and gravel, through water and saw the point beyond which no Auris’s or campervans could go. We got to the edge of the glacier and parked in what had been a lake before the eruption of 2010. We made a stone heap (an Icelandic thing!). We had truly seen and explored Iceland to the max. Everyone had new experiences we had achieved our dream: a perfect summer holiday for our family. We turned back and crossed all of the fords again, laughed at the no further point for the Auris’s and made our way back to the airport. So with sadness that it was all over we checked in at the B&B, handed over the keys and prepared to return. We would definitely say if you are thinking of going just go for it, it is amazing and wonderful. No it’s not really expensive and it only cost us c£1,000 per head all in. The only question we ask now is — where next?